High Diving Hare
High Diving Hare is a 1949 Looney Tunes short directed by Friz Freleng. Plot Bugs Bunny is drumming up business for a vaudeville show in a remote western town (notably one of the posters in the background is for "Frizby the Magician", a reference to director Friz Freleng). One of the main attractions is "Fearless Freep" and his high-dive act. As soon as Yosemite Sam hears the name "Fearless Freep", he goes into a frenzy, buying as many tickets as he can. (I'm a-splurgin'!) During the show, as Bugs is about to introduce Freep, he gets a telegram informing him that Freep is delayed by a storm and won't be able to appear until the next day. An angered Sam insists on seeing the high-diving act and forces Bugs at gunpoint to the top of a high-dive platform. But Bugs manages to pull out all his tricks and stops, and it is Sam who does all the diving, in a different comical setting nine separate times (in a variant of the diving act from "Stage Door Cartoon"). 1: Sam pushes Bugs to the edge of the platform (and for the only time we see Bugs bare his claws to secure himself to the edge of the board). Bugs dupes Sam into covering his eyes while he puts on his bathing suit, and then proceeds to spin the board around so that Sam is at the diving edge. Bugs makes it look like he's taken the dive (accompanied with an audible "SPLASH!!"), but Sam turns around and starts to walk off, right off the edge and into the tank, which falls apart with the water still intact! 2: Bugs springs on the board so hard (reciting "One for the Money") that he sends Sam up, over and down (separating Sam from his pistols in the process). Bugs then realizes that he forgot to fill the tank with water, so he grabs a bucket of water from off-camera and throws it down from the diving board past Sam. The water makes it into the tank, but Sam misses the tank altogether, smashing through the stage into the basement. 3: Sam walks to the end of the board and finds Bugs standing under the board upside-down ("Great horny toads! What are ya doin' down there upside-downy?"). But it is Sam who is upside-down ("I'm not upside down, doc. You are!"). Sam looks "up", sees the tank, and falls "up" into it. 4: Having been verbally hit with "fightin' words", Bugs dares Sam to "step over this line" (in a gag similar to one from "Bugs Bunny Rides Again"), and Sam agrees to. Sam steps over it, sending him down for the splash again (but not before springing back up briefly to declare: "I hate you!") 5: Sam is stopped by a door, and yells "Open up that door!" then turns to the audience and says, "You notice I didn't say Richard?". He backs up and charges towards the door, which Bugs opens at the last microsecond, leading Sam to another splash, this time assisted by an anvil which Bugs gives him. 6: Bugs, dressed as an Indian, points Sam to a "short-cut" in a desert-like setting ("Quick! Him go that way! You take-em short cut! Head him off at pass!"). Sam thanks the "Indian" and takes the route leading to yet another dive. After two more dives in which the setups are unseen, Sam finally has Bugs tied up and standing on the edge of the platform, with Sam sawing away at the board, gloating: "Now, you smarty-pants, let's see you get out of this one! Ha-ha-ha-ha! This time, you're a-diving!" However, as soon as Sam cuts through the board, it's the ladder and platform that falls, leaving the cut plank suspended in mid-air. Bugs cracks, "I know this defies the law of gravity, but, you see, I never studied law!" Availability * VHS - From Hare to Eternity * VHS - Looney Tunes: The Collectors Edition Volume 9: A Looney Life * DVD - Looney Tunes Golden Collection: Volume 1, Disc One (low pitch, due to the 1998 dubbed version being the source of the soundtrack) * DVD - Looney Tunes Super Stars' Bugs Bunny: Wascally Wabbit * Blu-Ray, DVD - Looney Tunes Platinum Collection: Volume 3, Disc 1 Notes * This is last cartoon where Bugs is seen sitting on the WB shield until "(Blooper) Bunny" in 1991. Shorts following this one have his face appear much like the 1944-45 cartoon openings. * The short is an expansion of a gag from "Stage Door Cartoon", also directed by Freleng. * This cartoon, though edited for time, was used in Friz Freleng's Looney Looney Looney Bugs Bunny Movie. * Bugs claims to have acrophobia, the fear of heights. Censorship ABC has aired two edited versions of this cartoon--one for The Bugs Bunny Show and another for The Bugs & Tweety Show''http://www.intanibase.com/gac/looneytunes/censored-h.aspx * The version that aired on ''The Bugs Bunny Show shortened Bugs Bunny's carnival barking and cut Yosemite Sam's line as he enters the platform "Ya notice I didn't say a-Richard?". * The version that aired on The Bugs Bunny and Tweety Show left in the scenes that were cut on The Bugs Bunny Show, but cut the scene where Bugs (while on the high-dive) disguises himself as an Indian and tells Sam "Him go that-a-way! You take-um shortcut! Head him off at past! Ugh!" (this scene was also cut from Nickelodeon's version of this cartoon, though, surprisingly not Cartoon Network or Boomerang), along with the scene where Sam strangles Bugs, and then Bugs tells Sam that he doesn't want to do it because he gets "goosebumps on his goosebumps", and Sam forces him to do so by shooting at his feet. References External Links High Diving Hare on the SFX Resource See also List of Bugs Bunny cartoons Category:Bugs Bunny Cartoons Category:Yosemite Sam Cartoons Category:Hollywood in Cartoons Category:Shorts Category:Looney Tunes Shorts Category:Cartoons directed by Friz Freleng Category:Looney Looney Looney Bugs Bunny Movie Cartoons Category:Blue Ribbon reissues Category:1949 Category:Cartoons written by Tedd Pierce Category:Cartoons with layouts by Hawley Pratt Category:Cartoons with backgrounds by Paul Julian Category:Cartoons with characters voiced by Mel Blanc Category:Cartoons with music by Carl W. Stalling Category:Cartoons with orchestrations by Milt Franklyn Category:Cartoons with film editing by Treg Brown Category:Cartoons with sound effects edited by Treg Brown Category:Cartoons produced by Eddie Selzer Category:Cartoons animated by Pete Burness